February 15, 2026 - Editor's note: been working on this for just about a year now... it feels very close to my heart and vulnerable to share but I do want to save these days for ever and ever :-) So here we are!
It's the day after Valentine's day. Snow is falling in big fluffy flakes, and I’ve just fallen flat on my ass outside Ari's place. A couple walks by; one of them just did the exact same thing around the corner, and we have that instantaneous and brief snow day connection while laughing it off— it’s really coming down! It’s a wasteland out here! Be careful, get home safe! I make it around the back of the building where the entrance to the stairwell is propped open with a brick, push open the door, and fall down into the basement, a pile of myself. This is decidedly less funny.
Up three flights of stairs is the living room where a supergroup of friends and I are playing acoustic sets tonight. Off the stairwell in the smoke room, people are warming up and drawing in chalk on the wall. It’s mostly cupid’s arrow hearts: R+C, A+Y, carved into the bark. Everyone starts to settle down in front of the couch while Lucy sets up, and all of a sudden there’s barely space to make your way to an open pocket, all of us packed in like sardines. People keep trying to open up the windows further but they’re making awkward reaches, knocking around candles on the windowsills; multiple near-misses of hair and fire related disaster follow. Heads pop out of the kitchen when we run out of floor. Everyone in the room has complimented Sammy’s hat.
Each one of us are in bands or front bands or love bands that are, by all standards, loud as fuck. Bands that invite reckless motion and the blurry half-drunk bleed into each other like watercolors. Tonight everyone is silent, looking up with doe eyes. It occurs to me I’ve only really ever spoken to some of these people in places where we’ve had to yell, and now it’s overwhelmingly quiet. Getting to hear (truly hear!) your friends sing for the first time is like infinite little kisses on the forehead. Aidan’s making tea in the kitchen and the kettle is singing along.
I say I’m too sleepy to go out after and still end up at the bar, guitar and all. But I quickly realize I was, in fact, too sleepy. After one (1) cranberry juice, I start my trek home in the snow. Waiting for the train, I turn over lyrics from Ari’s friendship song in my head like a coin between my fingers, until I’m doused with slush by a passing car. On the train ride home I sit next to two identical couples, each consisting of an abruptly normal guy and his gorgeous goth girlfriend. Happy Valentine's Day.
Last time I saw KO Queen I broke my glasses in the pit... this time we're at church. Ash and Tony and I have peeled ourselves off of lawn chairs to descend into the seventh circle of Pissmas 4. I keep thinking everyone is here and then more everyone shows up. We've made it for the end of PV, which has more people on stage than I ever thought possible. There's something vaguely clownish about their sound today. Fittingly about 10 steps behind me there's a clown in a cage.
Things get more incredulous from there. Broadsword, going corporate, two drum kits and a trombone (how I miss you Space Camp). On the lawn between sets Chase is having strong opinions on local album releases. We take a gas station snack run. Where did the sword come from again? There's reverence in the air mixed with vape clouds. Everyone keeps finding new ways to give, to organize, to make everyone in the room laugh, the infinite gift of life and music and love for your friends.
I was born on September 1st, Allston Christmas. Allston Jesus, delivered under the Night Star (Dom once said, and I've never stopped quoting). That is to say I've never had a normal Boston birthday. Every year I've been moving myself or someone else, running up and down flights of stairs with boxes and desks, loading trucks and trying to keep the cat inside. This year, I was out, for good, on the 25th of August. A pink armchair that had been a staple of my apartments for the past three years went back to the street from which it came, to another loving host. I couldn't help but feel left out when my birthday came around. The chaos! The mutual upheaval, exhaustion, renewal in a new place! It's an unusual thing to feel yourself moving (literally) inexplicably alongside what feels like an entire city. It's one of my favorite things about Boston and tragically one reason why it is so hard to plant roots there. It is a city mired in transition and consequently most people see it as transitory. But what could be more beautiful than shedding skin alongside all the people you love?
I spent my last summer in Boston close enough to the center of everything to run from my house, to your house, back across the bridge to a different show, air thick with humidity, smuggling a lukewarm beer in my pocket. Hauling all our shit to band practice at Steve's (or Maeve's, or) in a Starmarket shopping cart. The day before I graduated I was up until god knows when at KC's birthday party, writing on every wall I could-- a feeble attempt at immortality. I wanted to make something that would stay after I was gone. Even painted over; everybody knows the landlord special is hiding something underneath. I wanted something to stay still, that thing so against my nature. I woke up sick to my stomach the next morning and walked.
Back to Valentine's day, the real one this time. The first time I went to O’Brien’s, it was to play my first show with a band to an audience of about 15 people (if we’re being generous). Maybe it was because I was underage, or because the door guy was kind of a dick, but I vowed I’d never go back. And yet, like a moth to the neon PBR logo…
February 14th I dance all night with Arro and Mo and Judith and KC, with dear friends and dear strangers. I push around with a purpose during warmachine. I scream to Paper Lady and eat shit— unbeknownst to me, for the first of three times this weekend— during Nurse Joy (RIP). If it sparks joy, then nurse it! On stage Arro announces, "Everyone here is my girlfriend. Especially my girlfriend." And I beam and beam and beam.
After the show I’m loitering at the merch table when Joe, the bartender, comes up to Mae. He says something to the effect of, he’s been bartending forever, been in bands forever, and he’s seen a lot of bad music. But watching Nurse Joy and seeing all these kids dance made him proud and excited about what's blooming in Allston. Mae tries to get a word in between “thank you’s”, ask him about his band or his life outside the bar, and Joe bulldozes right over it to keep raving, as if he feels his time here is almost up, as if he will never really have the time or the proper words to express what tonight meant to him. Sheepish, like a kid meeting their hero. He invites everyone back— “Play a show on a Wednesday! I’m here on Wednesdays!”
Time moves fast and energy wanes. Load in load out load in load out drink PBRs like water. And every once in a while, everyone moves together for the same purpose, a hand grazing your cheek in affection, saying I’m here and you’re here and it wouldn’t be the same without us. It's love packed exponentially beyond fire code into apartments with an open flame. I watch 15-year-old videos of bands in the same basements I know inside and out now, retell the same ghost stories, find a new scene thousands of miles upon miles and countries away, and feel like I could cry at the mirror, everything lost to time and everything built in its memory. People are always making music, they’ll always find ways to play it, people to play it with. In every scene there are kernels of familiarity. But the people you run into, the places you go, the sidewalks, the subways, the corporate ponds, the rats, the rabbits, the supermarkets and stupid giant Citgo signs make everything special, everything significant. Nothing will ever be quite like this, right here, right now. We’ve already been here in another lifetime. We’re another coil in the spiral, and everything is new again. So yeah I guess you can find love at O’Brien’s.
Doris zine anthology pg. 287 (Cindy Crabb)